VIDEOVERSE

Man, dunno what I expected when I started this game. What a beautiful journey about friendship, being a teenager and the bonding over videogames. A nice lesson about how even if fandoms die, games shutdown and people move on, the bonds we made existed, were real and will shape us and follow us all our life so we should treasure each friendship we had. Thanks Kinmoku for creating such beautiful game, it will be in my mind for a long time.

Sublime, Videoverse is sublime. Firstly, it's a visual novel that doesn't feel like one, as it takes place on a fictional console system whose days are numbered with the arrival of a new model. Here, as well as chatting to progress the story, you can explore some forums, give likes, make comments and so on, all very interactive with a nostalgic pixel-art aesthetic. It does a good job with its characters and scenes, capturing the typical internet drama, with things like stalkers, trolls, haters and, of course, those rewarding friends. It's a game that felt very relatable to me and left me with that empty feeling upon completion, so I highly recommend it.

Miiverse was great, so a Miiverse-alike for a fictional Nintendo-alike sounded right up my alley. Unfortunately, I really don't think this game delivers on that promise. So little of the actual game is looking at people's posts. Bafflingly, there is only one single game community you can browse, and it hardly feels like it's about the game. You can never see screenshots from the game, they almost never ask for advice or actually talk about game mechanics, almost all the fan art is just the characters' faces, and when your character plays the game you never see a single second of non-cutscene gameplay. Miiverse had a ton of faults but it was very game-focused and you simply don't get that from this. Instead, most of the game is spent DMing/video chatting the player character's friends, and those sections are just boring. I don't know why they were even included, because Miiverse never had that functionality. Miiverse also had some extremely weird and endearing posts on it. There's the legendary "y can't metroid crawl" guy of course, who eventually beat the game! There's also "Mount Wario... is that a place or a command?" and the "Amazing looking water in this game" guy, and the "ganondorf is my new stepdad and he makes me pancakes every morning" guy. The posts in Videoverse don't even come close to that level of weirdness. For the posts that the game does have, there's a distracting reliance on memes that are much newer than the date in which the game supposedly takes place. It's supposed to be happening in 2003 but there are memes from 2020 and later. It just doesn't feel like the old internet when the references are from the real world and not period-appropriate. I loved Hypnospace Outlaw's fictional internet and I was hoping to get more of that from this. Maybe it's not fair to compare a small project like this to one of the best indie games ever, but considering they're both fictional internet simulators I made the comparison nonetheless. If the game had gone for the Hypnospace approach and made the player merely an observer in almost all cases I think it would have been much improved, because the interactions between Emmett and his online friends never did anything for me at all.

Miiverseやうごメモなどを彷彿とさせる「あの頃のオンラインコミュニティ」で起こるボーイミーツガールを描いた、レトロ風味のアドベンチャーゲーム。 2003年、人気携帯ゲーム機「Shark」とそのソーシャルネットワークコミュニティである「Videoverse」は次世代機「Dolphine」の発表を受けて沸き立っていた。そんななか、ドイツ在住の少年エメットは大好きなゲームである「Feudal Fantasy」（FF）のファンアートを通じ、絵の巧い少女Viviと出会う。オンライン越しに交流を深めていくふたりだったが、そこに「Videoverse」閉鎖の報が舞い込むーーといったお話。 2000年代初期を意識したインターフェースで戸惑う部分はあるかもしれないが、基本的にはシンプルなアドベンチャーゲーム。Viviを含めたオンライン上の友人たちと交流しつつ、荒らしがいたら通報したり、いい絵を投稿しているユーザーにコメントやいいねをつけたりしてコミュニティの治安や雰囲気を向上させていく。 このゲームはなにがいいって、雰囲気がいい。 「Shark」は、なぜかツートンカラーの1bitのグラフィックで、そのくせオンライン機能があって、なぜか音声無しのビデオチャットができて、という2003年にこんな進んでいるのか遅れてるのかよくわかんないゲーム機はありえないだろ！とつっこみたくなるようなチャーミングなゲーム機ではある。 だが、そこに描かれているキャラクターたちはたまらなく「リアル」だ。 コミュニティでも基本ティーンエイジャーたちが好き勝手やっているのだけれど、たまに30代の「おじさん」や子持ちのお母さんなども混じっている。地域性も豊かで、ユーザーの出身国もイギリスからポルトガルまで、実に多様。 そうしたひとびとが互いに分け隔てなく、無邪気にゲームのことについて語り合う。のみならず、行き場のない悩みを打ち明けたりもする。それは恋愛相談であったり、家庭の問題であったり、セクシュアリティであったり……。 「リアル」に居場所を見いだしづらいひとびとが互いを思いやる、理想化された「あの頃のインターネット」がここにはある。もちろん、荒らしや企業による個人情報収奪やグルーミングなどの現存するネットの良くない面などにも留意されてはいる。あくまでノスタルジーを損なわない程度ではあるが。 概してネットは人間を醜悪にするのかもしれないけれど、美点も引き出すことがある。本作でも一見手のつけようがない荒らしに、根気よく付き合っていき、彼の問題を理解しつつ、ゲームを通じて仲良くなっていくという描写がある。 画面の向こうで、顔も知らないどころか、下手したら直接言葉を交わしたことのないような人間をおもいやることができる。それはネットの可能性であり、アーケード時代からのゲームの達成だ。 近年、欧州やオーストラリアなどで未成年のSNS使用を規制する流れができつつある。ネットが秘密のアジールではなくなった2020年代ではしょうがないことかもしれない。昔でさえ、未成年者のネット利用はさまざまな危険と隣合わせで、実際事件がいくつも報じられていた。 一方で、あの頃のインターネットのおおらかさに救われた子どもたちがいたこともたしかだ。あれは、世界の広さを最初に教えてくれた場所だった。その美しさは、たしかに一つの作品として書き留めるに値するのだろう。 難点は一部の翻訳とバグ。 日本語訳はやや奇妙なバランスになっていて、おおむねプレイに支障はないのだが、ときどき昔の機械翻訳調っぽくなる。口調もブレがち。 バグではプレイ中に進行不能バグに2,3度ほど遭遇した。自分は6時間ほどプレイを巻き戻すはめになったこともあったので、セーブはこまめに行おう。いちおう、オートセーブ機能もあるのだが、オートセーブ間隔が短いので「あれ、これバグ？　演出？」みたいになって戸惑っているあいだにオートセーブ枠が進行不能地点以降で埋まってしまいがち。

A really special game that perfectly replicates the early 2000s and the rise of internet and communication technology, especially in the gaming sphere. It's a tale of human connection, where the protagonist, a 15-year old, tries to come to terms with his favourite in-console communication service closing in favour of the new one, available only with the brand new console. And he tries to make the last months count as he fears of losing contact with the friends he made along the way. It's heart-clenching, pure and cute, while also dealing with the snarky and creepy nature of internet in some aspects.

Im still crying lmao my heart hurts This hits different. Loved the story and the art.

Kojima would have introduced the game with "The web has changed"

Well-designed facsimile of a turn-of-the-century digital community. The way the story addressed disability was an interesting and welcome choice. Though, generally, it felt a bit limited by the fact that this was the experience of a straight white cis-dude of these online spaces, where ""diverse"" characters mainly existed for you to help by white-knighting and notifying/removing hamrful posts and being positive. It also never really engages with the problematics of policing communities through blocking/banning (the notification/block system is never gamed by trolls, for example). Ultimately still a touching coming-of-age story (for a particular generation), though it was also a bit inspiration-porny and self-congratulatory.

Must play for anyone who grew up in the IRC/MSN Messenger era and hung around gaming forums. Extremely nostalgic

I am late for my review as per the usual, for a day 1 buyer, but I am dropping in my recommendation after reaching my 100%, which took around 26 hours. There was a hiatus in between me playing this for the first time and then coming back to scoop up those last few achievements, but I feel it's highly worth noting that when I did, the music and sound effects, from logging into Videoverse and clicking around, already felt nostalgic from the first time I played. I'd forgotten, and then suddenly I remembered everything again, almost exactly like going back to a game from your childhood. This game really makes you feel like you're interacting with the fictional social media of its universe. Although I wouldn't say it feels as much like you've actually gone back in time, but more so just witnessing and experiencing a different timeline entirely, which is by no means a bad thing! There's definitely a cosy retro (to us) feeling to it, just doesn't feel like it's [i]our[/i] cosy retro, which I actually think makes it more interesting. It's its own world, and we're visiting. It's not trying too hard to hamfist nostalgic culture, and that's what makes it good. The entire game takes place within the boundaries of said in-universe console's embedded social network, which, as they all eventually do, is dying. Posts are slowing down, internet trolls are posting trash in droves because the company moderators are focusing their efforts on the next console's social media, which will be the replacement, but those still around are trying to make it's final days happy, healthy, and welcoming, in hopes of giving it a good send off and maintaining the good reputation and memories associated with it. The story focuses on how much this can mean for the people involved, how it can even shape who they become as adults, and how the adults can even discover new things about themselves and continue to grow. Online relationships are real relationships that absolutely effect and influence real life, and can do so in a very beneficial and supportive way. I don't have much to say on the art, mainly because it's just [i]good.[/i] I loved the 1-bit style, the use of dithering in the pixel art to denote textures and shading, in the very variegated way that it did, was so, so clever, and extremely interesting to look at. I will not lie, though, the chat mechanic can get a bit tiresome; there's no way to skip when the other person is "typing" and on a third or fourth playthrough this can become a little grating. For as much as I loved the visual aesthetic of this game I would minimise the window whilst other NPC's were chatting on just waiting for them to get on with it. But that is really my only nitpick. This was a very nice game with a very nice finish. Great job, Kinmoku!